


Fast Car

by Oop



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Steve's Pov, alcohol but casually, but also past non-angst?, i guess it could start underage but mostly not, idk it goes in reverse, mentions of drug use without actually using drugs, mentions of sex but with pretty much zero description, ooh boy where to start?, reckless speeding (obviously i mean look at the title), these two dweebs are ruining my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 21:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14246112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oop/pseuds/Oop
Summary: He thinks they must stop at some point, at lights or signs, but he doesn’t feel like they slow down for even one second. Everything rushes, they’re fucking flying, and Steve can’t believe that he can feel like this without drugs. He can’t believe that Billy Hargrove shows him how to feel like this. But then, Steve thinks, this is something fucking special, not something that can happen in any other car with any other driver.His grandma used to tell him not to make decisions by moonlight, but he thinks it’s too late to take this one back.He doesn’t want to take it back.





	Fast Car

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the deal, kiddos. I was just innocently listening to an old playlist and then - BAM - I was emotionally assaulted by "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman while thinking about Harringrove and I lost my absolute shit, okay? So that's what this is.

**v. you gotta make a decision: leave tonight or live and die this way**

 

“Billy?” Steve asks, blinking awake at the scrape of his window opening. Billy climbs in, bringing moonlight and winter air with him. He doesn’t close the window. That’s how Steve knows it’s Bad. “Billy.” He sits up, flips back the covers of his bed, expects Billy to take off his boots and crawl in next to him. He’ll be cold. He doesn’t even have his fucking jacket and there’s snow outside. Steve doesn’t care about the cold though; he’ll hold Billy as he shakes through it, like he always does. They can pretend, together, that the shivering is just from outside.

Billy keeps his face carefully turned away from the light. He doesn’t want Steve to see. He never does. It doesn’t matter; Steve will see in the morning and, when Billy’s not looking, Steve will wipe away the rage that pours from his eyes, like he does every time. “Come to bed,” he says, picking at the comforter. Sometimes it takes Billy a while. Sometimes he needs invited a few times.

“I’m leaving,” Billy says. Firm. Resolute. Angry. He still won’t look at Steve.

Steve tries to blink the fatigue from his eyes. “What? You just got here.”

“No, Steve. I’m _leaving_.”

A concoction of slow understanding and whiplash adrenaline drips icily down Steve’s spine. He shivers, watching Billy wipe under his nose, the back of his hand coming away shiny with wet. Blood, probably, but hopefully not. “What?” Steve says again, feeling a thousand miles away and fucking _stupid_. He can’t breathe.

“I’m leaving,” Billy says, softly this time. He sits on the edge of Steve’s bed, twists toward him. The moon lights up one side of his face, a silver knife that cuts away the delicate illusion of darkness, reveals too fucking much. Steve’s breath trembles out, unsteady and awful. “Billy,” he whispers. Jesus. The outside of it is gruesome enough; Steve can’t imagine the inside, the thousand needle-sharp things Neil said, the things that catch and pull in Billy and make him hurt long after the bruises fade.

“Come with me,” Billy says.

Steve doesn’t think Billy should go anywhere. The hospital, maybe, or the police station. “Billy,” he says again.

“I’ve got a little money. I’ve got a fast car. We can be in Chicago before sunrise.” Billy’s talking through tears and blood, wiping at his face, but his eyes burn and he smiles shakily. Determination. Hope.

“Billy,” Steve whispers again, his own eyes filling. They _can’t_ . They can’t just _run away_.

“C’mon, Steve. Anything is better than this. _Anything_ . It doesn’t have to be Chicago. It could be anywhere. Let’s just _go_.” Billy takes one of Steve’s hands in his damp palms. His rough skin is cold but the blood from his face is warm, tacky. Steve thinks he might be sick. But Billy keeps talking. “I’ll get a job. I have experience from the shop now. You can do anything. Or nothing. It doesn’t matter. Just come with me.”

“We can’t, Billy,” Steve says. Knows immediately it was the wrong thing.

Billy laughs, but it’s broken, deflated. It’s rings like a gong: the beginning of the end. “Like hell we can’t.”

“ _I_ can’t.” He strokes up Billy’s arm, tries to chase the cold off of him, like maybe, if he can just get him _warm_ , remind him that not everything feels like this, he can convince him to _stay_.

“ _Why_?” It’s hard as a stone, that question, and Billy holds it out like he already knows Steve’s going to take it just to throw it back at him.

Steve licks his lips, lifts his other hand to wipe tears from Billy’s cheeks. Billy sniffs, leans into the touch. “ _Please_ , Steve. Please. Please. Please, come with me.”

“Don’t go,” Steve responds, and hates that he can even say it when he’s looking right at what staying does to Billy. If he loved Billy, how could he ask him to stay? _Selfish._

Billy closes his eyes, face still cradled in Steve’s hand. His breaths come in the unmistakable hitches of sobs contained at great cost. Tears run down Steve’s arm, hot at his wrist, cool at his elbow. It seems like a hundred years, and a mere second, before Billy pulls away, turning away from Steve again. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and sucks in a breath like he might never get another one, like this one rips him to shreds all the way down. Steve moves toward him, but he’s too late. Billy stands. Nods to the moonlight and the window, to no one.

“I’m leaving,” he says again, not looking at Steve. “Are you coming with me?” He sniffs again, wipes at his face, but won't look at Steve.

“Billy. Don’t go,” he says again, a broken record.

It’s exactly the wrong thing.

Billy’s out the window again before everything slams into Steve like he’s been in a nightmare the past ten minutes and can only now see it was real. It’s too late. He hears the Camaro roar to life. The wheels peal on the concrete. Billy has a fast car. He’ll drive himself into space before Steve’s mistake catches up.

Steve’s grandma always used to say something about not making decisions in moonlight. He thinks she was right. He wants to take this one back.

 

**iv. you still ain't got a job and I work in a market as a checkout girl**

 

Steve doesn’t notice that Billy had soft hands until, suddenly, they’re _not_. They’d always had calluses from basketball and weightlifting and driving too goddamned much, but even calluses have their own kind of softness when they’re polished often enough. This roughness though, it speaks of labor, of new, unfamiliar tasks, of injury and soaking in ice water every night to numb into bearability. Steve likes the new calluses and the way Billy comes over exhausted but pleased with himself and the way Billy looks with oil on his skin, grease on his clothes. Steve likes the way it stains his white sheets and the way it changes Billy’s smell to something just a little grittier.

“Someday,” Billy tells him after another week where Steve still hasn’t found a job. “Someday, I’m gonna take care of you, Princess.” He kisses Steve’s smooth hands, even his basketball calluses long gone. Steve thinks, if he could get rough hands from touching Billy, his fingertips would cut like jagged glass.

Thankfully, he can’t, so he puts his soft palm against Billy’s face and says, “No. _I’m_ gonna take care of _you_.” He’s going to let Billy have soft hands again, if that’s what he wants.

“You already do,” Billy says, and Steve loves him for it. Loves Billy because he doesn’t hate Steve for holding him back. Loves him because he values Steve just like this, even when Steve feels worthless and thinks he takes and takes and takes too much from Billy and can’t give enough back. They argue about a lot of shit, but never about _this_ shit, the _important_ shit, and Steve’s never heard of that before. It’s how he knows that Billy really is his endgame, his forever.

Pressing his mouth to Billy’s jaw, Steve says, “Then let me take care of you, baby.”

The list of things he _can’t_ give Billy is long enough to weave a noose for whatever this surprisingly solid thing they have is, but Steve _can_ give him _this_. And Billy accepts it with gratitude that sounds like Steve’s name rolled into a moan, with a body that has been thoughtlessly painted too many times laid out like a blank canvas for Steve. Sometimes, when Steve gives Billy something, it still feels like taking, like Steve doesn’t know how to stop and Billy doesn’t know how, has never once thought, to tell him no. Every time Billy looks at him like this, tender and enraptured, Steve knows he cradles Billy’s heart, fragile as bird bones, in the smooth cup of his palm and Steve tries not to squeeze it too tightly. Maybe, nestled between Billy’s rough fingers and Steve’s soft ones, they can keep it safe.

 

**iii. i got a plan to get us out of here**

 

Summer with Billy feels like a long dream. Their diplomas gather dust in Steve’s room; Steve’s parents grant him one last season of freedom and Billy’s waiting to hear back about a job at the garage across town. Most of the time, they drive and drive and eventually come back. They float in Steve’s pool and Steve watches Billy get three shades darker in what seems like a week. They drink at night because they can and they want to and neither of them feels like they’re slipping into the empty bottles. It’s good. It’s _so_ good, what they’ve got. It feels like a summer fling with all and none of the casualness. Steve doesn’t ever want it to end.

Sunset makes Billy something rare and foreign in the pool one evening, painting him pink and orange and red, lighting him up on the outside to match all his fire and flesh on the inside. Steve has watched him breathlessly for the past… he doesn’t know. Long enough that the ends of his hair have started drying. Without opening his eyes, Billy says, “Wanna hear a story?”

“Does it have a happy ending?”

Billy grins. “The happiest.”

“Okay, then. Let’s hear it.”

Billy hesitates, but only for a second. “Let’s leave Hawkins.”

“That’s not a story.”

“Fine. So once upon a time summer ended and Billy and Steve left Hawkins.”

Steve smiles, but says, “What was it Mrs. Jacobs used to say about stories having a--”

“Beginning, middle, and end,” they parrot together.

“Yeah, yeah,” Billy says, finally opening his eyes. He wades over to Steve, sliding his arms around his waist. His eyes are pink instead of blue, just like the water around them. “How’s this? I love you and I want you to leave Hawkins with me. We’ll live in a shitty apartment in the city and get shitty jobs and work until we can get a nicer apartment and nicer jobs and just… Be together. You and me.” He pauses, exhaling like he can feel every molecule of air banging around in his lungs and can’t stand it. “The end.”

Steve feels like too much water held back by a crumbling dam. He drops his head to Billy’s shoulder, inhales the chlorine on his skin. He wants to dig his fingers into Billy like claws and never let go. He wants to fucking _devour_ him. He doesn’t do those things. Instead, he draws a shaky breath. “I love you, too,” he says, and trusts himself to pull Billy closer without hurting him.

It’s not a full answer, but it’s something, probably more than either of them expected. Still, Steve can feel the buzzing under Billy’s skin, his _need_ to know. “Sounds like you’ve got a plan, Hargrove.”

“Beginning, middle, and end, Harrington.”

Steve’s pretty sure that’s for stories, not plans, but he thinks that sometimes, maybe, they can be the same.

 

**ii. and your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder. and i had a feeling that i belonged**

 

The weight of Billy’s arm around his shoulder makes Steve sag toward him. Billy is so much _weight_ and _density_ and _heaviness_ . He sucks in things around him like a black hole, and maybe that should send Steve running, but he _loves_ it. He lives for the weightlessness that Billy gives him by his presence alone. Maybe it’s the same kind of lightness as being swept up in a tornado, waiting for impact, but Steve doesn’t think so.

Billy leans in to press a kiss to his temple, and Steve marvels that that’s a thing that happens now. Often, if only in private. He doesn’t say anything, neither of them do, but they sit and Steve lets himself get sucked blissfully into Billy’s orbit, lets himself lean into the curve of Billy’s shoulder like it was molded for him.

“Why are you so comfortable?” Steve asks, pressing his face into Billy’s neck.

The smooth sounds of Billy lighting a cigarette wash over Steve a second before the smoke of the first pull. Billy, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, answers: “Because you’re where you belong.”

It hits Steve like electricity, evaporates his breath in his lungs, zaps every other thought.

Billy looks down at him, his arm tightening. Not a single thing about him suggests levity as he crimps the filter between his teeth and wraps his other arm around Steve, pulling him gently into the vee of his legs. Maybe it should feel weird, like craddling or cossetting or something, but Steve only feels the white noise, the roar of uncertainty and insecurity, in his head lull into a pleasant shush. Once, Dustin told him that caterpillars turn completely to liquid inside their cocoons. Steve thinks it must feel like _this_ , that disolving, losing physicality to reform into something different. It feels _good_ . Billy makes him feel _good_. He doesn’t have to say anything, doesn’t have to do anything besides hold him like this.

“I think I want to live inside of you,” Steve says, because sometimes he says weird, fucked up things to Billy that he never would have said to Nancy or any of the girls who came before her.

The amused sound Billy doesn’t actually make rumbles against Steve’s ear, pressed against Billy’s throat. He adjusts one arm to take the cigarette from between his lips. “You mean that in a weirdly romantic way and not in a messy murder way, right?”

Steve huffs, knows that Billy knows exactly what he meant. If his _everything_ wasn’t liquifying, he might do more than press a smile into Billy’s bare collarbone.

Viscerally, Steve knows that Billy was right. How could something this good, this integral, this _heavy_ , be anything other than belonging?

 

**i. speed so fast i felt like i was drunk, city lights lay out before us**

 

Billy’s car is fucking _fast_ . Steve had known that, of course, but not like this. Not from the inside. Not with the heat of the engine roasting his feet and the whip of the air lashing his face and Billy’s grin wild in his peripherals. Shit, this is _amazing._

“Faster!” Steve demands, and Billy smiles sharper and grips the wheel tighter. Steve doesn’t watch the speedometer climb. He doesn’t need to. He can feel it, the surge pressing him into the seat, the air beating his face, the wheels spinning so fast that it feels like driving on silk. The best part, though, is the intermittent flash of street lights, momentarily blinding him again and again.

Christ, he feels drunk. He feels _better_ than drunk.

“Faster!”

With a laugh, Billy whoops, and Steve thinks he can hear the pedal touch the floor. He doesn’t want to know how fast they’re going. It feels like hubris, trying to know the exact speed of perfection, the exact speed of flight, the exact speed of the best night of Steve’s life.

Indianapolis isn’t Chicago, but the streets are emptier, which means Billy doesn’t have to slow down as much. They tear through the city and Steve closes his eyes, lets the lights track and flash and blur behind his eyelids.

“Fuck. Are we in _space_?” Steve asks. Maybe they hit the secret speed to take off, to zip right out of their world and into another. One made of lights and the rumble of a strong engine put to the test.

Billy laughs again. (That’s a damn good sound, Steve thinks, and lets himself think it.) “Seeing UFOs in there, Pretty Boy?”

Steve opens his eyes to catch the exact shade of Billy’s grin in the lights. When he blinks, that tracks too. “I’m seeing _something_ ,” he says, and holds Billy’s eyes when they flick to him for just a second. They’re brighter than any of the lights outside and Steve feels _seen_ , but it feels good, like a fire in his belly. He closes his eyes again, smiling as Billy keeps driving up and down the city streets. He thinks they must stop at some point, at lights or signs, but he doesn’t feel like they slow down for even one second. Everything rushes, they’re fucking _flying_ , and Steve can’t believe that he can feel like this without drugs. He can’t believe that _Billy Hargrove_ shows him how to feel like this. But then, Steve thinks, this is something fucking special, not something that can happen in any other car with any other driver.

Dizziness sets in after a while, and Steve opens his eyes again. “Billy?”

“Yeah, Princess?”

“Take us home.” He grins. “ _Fast_.”

Billy chuckles, a little less wild but no less good, and says, “You got it, baby.”

Long after they’re back at Steve’s, long after Steve tugs Billy into his house by the front of his jacket and into his bed by his lips, long after Billy’s sleeping naked beside him, Steve still feels drunk on the exact tone of Billy’s voice when he’d called him _baby_.

His grandma used to tell him not to make decisions by moonlight, but he thinks it’s too late to take this one back.

He doesn’t want to take it back.

**Author's Note:**

> Cry with me? Cry at me? Help me?
> 
> My tumblr is thingsalexwrites.


End file.
